China to Build $40-Billion Canal Through Nicaragua

Communist China and Nicaragua's Sandinista government under Daniel Ortega are moving ahead with plans to build a $40-billion canal through Nicaragua, as China's footprint in Latin America grows.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega appears to be back on track with closing a deal for Communist China to begin building an inter-oceanic waterway to rival the Panama Canal. The South China Morning Post, on October 29, reported:

A top-level Nicaraguan delegation — headed by the president’s son — traveled to mainland China and Hong Kong last week to discuss what could be the world’s largest waterway project, the South China Morning Post has learned.

The 21 politicians, academics and leading businessmen were hosted by HKND, the Hong Kong-based developer established only last year, which has been tasked by the Nicaraguan government to build a $40-billion (HK$310-billion) canal through the Central American country.

Laureno Facundo Ortega Murillo, the son of Nicaragua’s president Daniel Ortega, led the group, which travelled to Beijing, Wuhan, Xuzhou, and Hong Kong.

In June of this year, President Ortega, who leads the Marxist-Leninist Sandinista party (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, or FSLN) and is a leader of the São Paulo Forum, an international consortium of terrorists and terrorist-supporting states (see here and here), signed a deal for the ambitious canal project with Wang Jing (shown), CEO of Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co. Ltd. (HKND), a mysterious new Chinese company that claims to be privately owned and independent of the Chinese government. But, as with virtually all Chinese companies, HKND remains opaque and refuses to reveal financial data, governing structure, and stock holdings that are routinely publicly available from companies in market economies. Wang Jing himself is similarly an enigma wrapped in a mystery. One of China’s new billionaires, Wang, reported to be 41 years old, amassed his wealth as CEO of Xinwei Telecom Enterprise Group, which manufactures wireless devices, telecom terminals, and core network devices.

“Wang has business interests in infrastructure, mining, aviation and telecommunications, according to HKND’s website,” Bloomberg News reported earlier this year. “He controls or serves as board chairman of more than 20 companies in 35 countries around the world, the website shows.” However, the Bloomberg article noted, “Wang pledged transparency for the project but gave very few details about his own background. He refused to answer a reporter’s question about where he attended school.”

“I am 100 per cent certain the construction will begin in December 2014 and we will finish in five years in 2019,” Wang was quoted as saying in a July 30 report in London’s Telegraph.

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